Good idea. I'll sing it in my head. I always thought the best part of the whole song is the bird. I always heard, "Oh, yeah!, you think I'm stupid... any girl who would murder her own true love would kill a little bird like me." When I've sung the song over the years, maybe it's because I get such a kick out of the bird (although I don't add the "oh, yeah" that that's the point in the song where people get a kick out of it, too. What's a good murder ballad, without a little humor?

I suppose that there might be some discomfort about adding a verse to a traditional song, but people do it. Many years ago, I wrote a song based on an old handbill they reprinted at Sturbridge Village, based on a true incident that took place in New England. Levi Kelly was accused and found guilty of murder and was sentenced to be hung. As was the custom in those days, they built a scaffold in the center of town and eveyone brought their picnic lunches to watch the hanging. Families that hang together, stick together. The built bleachers around the scaffold, and so many people got up to get a close look at the hanging, that the bleachers collapsed and several people were killed. My kinda story. I had misplaced the handbill, so in the song, while everyone was lying around him, dead and dying, Levi slipped away. A few years after I wrote the song and had shared it on tape with Sally Rogers, she called me one evening to ask where I learned the song. She had added another verse to it. I told her that I wrote it. And, there was a long silence on the other end of the line. She felt very awkward about adding a verse to a song I'd written. She had no problems adding a verse to a traditional song. When folks are dead, who cares? (Just kidding.) I think eve the purest of traditional folksingers has rewritten lines of songs, not necessarily because they couldn't understand a line on a recording... they just thought it made the song flow more smoothly. I'd bet that most traditional folk singers who decry songwriters have a secret song that they've written, hiding in their closet, too..

Jerry